Pecker Pics and Tabloid Tricks

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

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🗓️ 14 February 2019

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recently accused the National Enquirer of “extortion and blackmail” over private photos of him obtained by the tabloid. In a Medium post, Bezos shared emails from the Enquirer that threaten to publish those photos unless he accedes to their demands. How did a celebrity magazine get into the rough and tumble world of extortion? Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker staff writer and CNN’s Chief Legal Analyst, joins Alex Wagner to share insights from his 2017 profile of the man who runs the tabloid. How did the National Enquirer become what it is today? Why does it pay to silence stories about Donald Trump? And why is it at war with Jeff Bezos? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In many ways President Donald Trump owes his success to tabloid journalism.
0:07.0	John Cassidy writes in the New Yorker that during the 1980s, when he was an up-and-comer on the New York
0:12.3	real estate scene, Trump was constantly
0:14.6	planting puff stories about himself in the city's tabloids.
0:18.8	During the 1990s, Trump resurrected his career by persuading the banks not to abandon him and eventually
0:24.6	by becoming a star on reality television, itself a bastardized form of tabloid journalism.
0:31.5	Perhaps no tabloid has been more helpful to Trump than the National Inquirer.
0:36.1	We learned last year that the paper purchased and then killed multiple stories that were
0:40.7	unflattering to Trump as he campaigned for president.
0:44.2	And now we have allegations that the Inquirer sought to blackmail one of Trump's chief rivals,
0:49.6	at least in Trump's eyes, Amazon CEO and owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos.
0:55.6	We know this because Bezos himself posted details last week about what he called an extortion
1:00.9	and blackmail attempt by the Inquirer.
1:04.0	How did a celebrity magazine get into the rough and tumble world of extortion?
1:09.2	And why does the President of the United States keep appearing or not appearing in its headlines.
1:15.0	This is Radio Atlantic. With me now is Jeffrey Tuben, staff writer for the New Yorker and chief legal analyst for CNN.
1:35.2	What a pleasure.
1:36.2	Jeff's great to have you on the podcast.
1:37.8	Hi Alex.
1:39.0	So two years ago you presciently profiled AMI CEO David Becker a name we now have seen in the headlines
1:48.1	quite a bit in recent weeks.
1:50.8	His company was under scrutiny for a pattern of suppressing negative stories about
	...

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